


All the Ways We Drowned

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Epistolary, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was not thinking of an after, but somehow I have found myself in one. This is horrible, horrible, horrible. You are aware of its horribleness, wherever you are, in your own hellish After. You have heard how it is here. You would sympathise, but you can't, because I did not manage it, and so you think that I did it.</p><p>It is nearly unfathomable to me, that you could imagine me—<em>me</em>, Remus—working with Voldemort, handing him Lily and James and Harry. I say nearly, because I believed it of you; and how could I have when I knew you, know you—how could I have, and how could you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Ways We Drowned

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure you could figure this out on your own, but just to avoid any confusion, the numbers throughout this fic denote the number of months that have passed since Halloween, 1981 (aka when Voldemort showed up in Godric's Hollow and Sirius and Peter had their showdown and Sirius got arrested). So 001 is November, 1981; 144 is October, 1993, etc. Don't worry, there's not an entry for every month. That would be excessive, even for me. Also, this does include some adult content, so proceed at your own risk and all that. I hope you enjoy! (Also posted on FFN and LJ.)
> 
> Edit: Awakeatnight on FFN has written a companion piece of sorts from Remus's perspective. Find it here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8890052/1/As-Though-We-Were-Boundless, it's the best thing since anything ever.

001.

I am mad and I love you. Or should that be: I am mad but I love you? Loving you does not negate the madness, so, the first: I am mad and I love you. But the second—can you forgive me, because I am mad but I love you?

003.

I was not thinking of an after, but somehow I have found myself in one. This is horrible, horrible, horrible. You are aware of its horribleness, wherever you are, in your own hellish After. You have heard how it is here. You would sympathise, but you can't, because I did not manage it, and so you think that I did it.

It is nearly unfathomable to me, that you could imagine me— _me_ , Remus—working with Voldemort, handing him Lily and James and Harry. I say nearly, because I believed it of you; and how could I have when I knew you, know you—how could I have, and how could you?

But I did, because—well. The world is not particularly kind to werewolves. I've wanted to commit a few murders on your behalf over the years (not something I ought to admit, considering where I'm sitting, but they put me here without a trial, so I can tell the truth: I would kill a man who believes that you are not deserving of a human life). If I've wanted to kill for you, and if James has wanted to kill for you, and even—but no, I won't go there—and if Lily, fiery, lovely Lily, once cursed a man for  _daring_  to glance in your direction with his nose wrinkled, well, if all of us felt that way about it, how could you avoid wanting some form of revenge? Voldemort was offering revenge. If it had been just you and me, Remus, I may have taken it. I may have blackened my soul for the chance to snuff out a few of those who've hurt you. But I don't need to remind you that it was never just you and me—it was always all of us.

Before, we reasoned that you were expecting a lifetime of discrimination, and maybe you were so tired of it all, so ready to be done with it, that you fell for Voldemort. This was our rationale. I see now that it was a terribly weak one.

And so I believed it of you, and you are believing it of me, now. And you have more reason, and worse reasons. You believe that I killed "poor pathetic Peter," as well. (Excuse the pretentiousness of the quotation marks—I cannot think of him without them—I can hardly breathe, sometimes, but that is not the point.) I did not kill him. I wish I had. I wish that we had never befriended him. I wish that the Sorting Hat had seen his future, and had imprisoned him right then. An eleven year-old in Azkaban—I am criminal for thinking it.

But it was Peter. He betrayed Lily and James, he caved to the appeal of power; he did it, Remus, not you, not I.

I wish that he had died the way they say he did. Of course, you've caught on by now (no one will read these, no one, but Remus, oh, I wish you were. I wish you knew). He transformed. He may be living as a rat indefinitely. Probably, considering his cowardice.

I am sorry I acted rashly. I am sorry I said, "Use Peter," rather than "Use me," or "Use Remus," or "Use Dumbledore." I cannot help but think that it was my fault. I am so very sorry that I believed the worst of you.

That I was not there with you when you found out nearly kills me. I wish—but wishes are dead, useless.

006.

I laughed.

I'm sure that is going around.

I laughed, because he had tricked us, and we never even expected it.

I laughed, because the whole world should have stopped, but it continued improbably on—people kept screaming, kept dying, and I was laughing, because my heart couldn't sustain a scream.

007.

A  _rat_. We should have known. Why didn't we know?

009.

It is the strangest thing, the way we all sank into our animal selves so readily, when you pushed yours away and it chased you. Obviously, they are different things. A werewolf is a twisted, diseased Animagus. But I am Padfoot again (not right now, but sometimes), and it is good, better than being human. I remember you while I'm him, I remember the good things, and I cling to them when I return to myself. They linger for brief moments, before the dementors outside sink them with sorrows.

I feel as if I'm breaking a wall when I write about them. If I don't acknowledge them, do they stop existing? If I write to you about other things, will they disappear?

I say  _to you_. If you were actually receiving these notes, I would say:  _I love you. I'm sorry. I didn't do what they say I did. I love you._ That is all. Less risk of misinterpretation. As it is, I suppose I've conjured an imaginary you, a Moony who reads these pages over my shoulder as I scribble them in the margins of papers obtained from people touring the prison. Maybe someday they'll give me a book and I can fill the spaces between lines and sentences and paragraphs with our love story. Our tragedy.

012.

I have today's copy of  _The_   _Prophet_. It's been a year.

How has it been a year?

How has the world not stopped yet?

(But how has it been  _only_  a year? Time is both interminable and indeterminable here.)

014.

They scream about him. This place is full of their noise. The loyalty they have for Voldemort, even now, after he seems to have disappeared astounds me. (I do not believe it, but if anyone could have done him, it was Harry—do you remember that time I left my bag on the table and Harry somehow got a hold of it and turned the whole thing inside out, pieces of paper flying everywhere and drool all over the dragonskin? I swear there were teeth marks, too, even though he was still all gums then.) But Voldemort, the monster, must be more resilient than dragonskin. They  _love_  him, in this sick and poisoned way. It makes the place reek. It delights the dementors, the way the Death Eaters feel about him.

And how they hate Peter. I wish he would appear here.

017.

I slept last night, for the first time in—oh, I could not tell you how long. And of course I dreamt of you.

018.

If I'm not dreaming nightmares, I'm dreaming of you, the same one again and again. It wasn't anything that's ever happened, but it almost could have.

We are on the shore—and that's how I know it is a dream, because we've never gone to the shore, Moony, although we should have—and it is raining, raining the way it does in books on sad days. A cool drizzly mist, and in my dream I tell you, "I'm disappointed that this weather prevents me from seeing that fine arse in your new swim trunks," and you turn to look at me, this bright grin on your face, your eyes the lightest brown I've ever seen them, and you laugh like I am the best person in the world and then you say, "Sirius Black, you are incorrigible." And suddenly you are wearing swim trunks and nothing else, even though it is wet and rainy. I chase you into the waves and they feel like ice. You look light in the water, but I am heavy, still clothed, wearing robes and shoes that feel like manacles against the sand. You shake your head at me and swim towards me; your hands are on my face—have I ever told you how very much I love your hands? I must have, but your fingers, Moony, they're lovely, more than lovely, orgasmic on their own, really—and you lean in to kiss me, and it is all cold and salty and rain is falling but your mouth is so warm, so warm, I have not felt that warm since the last time I woke up in your bed.

I miss rain. And you, and you, always you.

019.

I don't remember the last time I woke up in your bed.

022.

Was it the morning with the pastries? I woke up and you were still asleep, all long-limbed and sprawling, and I slipped out of bed without waking you (a miracle) and pulled on your trousers with no pants and one of your shirts and went down to the corner store to get pastries for us, and then I made coffee and put too much cream in yours, but when I brought them into your room you were awake, watching the door like you were waiting for me. I remember your elbows were up, your arms making triangles with your hands behind your head, and I set the coffee on the bedside table and the pastries on the mattress, but you grabbed my (your) belt-loop and dragged me down, and we didn't even get to the pastries until the sun was somewhere around the middle of the sky, and your coffee had gone cold so it didn't matter that there was too much cream in it, because you tossed it anyway. (But you kissed me afterwards, hard, as if you felt bad for throwing away something I had made you, even something as inconsequential as a cup of bad coffee.)

023.

Maybe the last time was the day after we went to that pub and got so terribly drunk with Alice and Frank. Was it then? I woke up second, and you were lying there, having kicked the sheets away from you and over onto me, staring up at the ceiling as if through sheer concentration you could make your body stop aching.

I asked you, "Whassamatter, love?"

You placed your hands over your eyes and said, "Please say you are not still drunk."

I think I may have been even though I told you quite vehemently that I was  _not_. I got you water and a hangover potion, though, that ought to have helped a little.

Merlin, I hope that was not the last time. How unromantic.

028.

All these feelings feed the dementors and most days I cannot have them this near, my heart pulsing into their gasping mouths. It is awful to feel so weak, awful and horrid. Breathing ought to be easy, but when the saddest things in the world keep playing through your (by which I mean my) head—well, it's tantamount to scaling a mountain.

029.

Here is what my mind is full of:

– My mum and dad's faces when I told them I got into Gryffindor; being burnt off the family tree  
– You telling me, the first time, that we couldn't.  
– You telling me, the third time, that I did not understand you.  
– Finding out about you.  
– Leading Severus Snape to you; James's reaction; yours  
– Your second reaction, and your third  
– My damnable little brother.  
– Cold sweat and the way they all wanted us; we had offers from so many of my prison-mates, Moony, and it drives me mad  
– James, Lily, Harry, Godric's Hollow, the collapsed building, feeling terrible and sad and shaking like an explosion and Hagrid looking like the sun had died (and didn't it?) and Harry  _screaming  
_ – Peter Peter Peter Peter over and over Peter

And I wonder, what memories of you have the dementors suffocated?

032.

How are you, though? I hope your world is brighter in the After.

(Why can't you respond, Remus? We used to nearly read each other's minds.)

035.

It's strange to think of not knowing you. The eleven years before you are a blur of dark family gatherings and high-class education, by which I mean an ingrained process of brainwashing that I somehow managed to (mostly) escape. And then you.

No, sorry, that's a romantic reinvention of the past. My first sight of you? A small scared boy with wide eyes and messy brown hair, standing with slumped shoulders in the crowd before the Sorting. You looked too timid for me to like you.

So at that moment you barely registered, but then, no one really registered. I had a resolution: I was not going to be in Slytherin. That was the end all, be all, of that first of September. The end all, be all, of my small little life.

The Sorting Hat said, "Not Slytherin, of course," the instant it hit my head, and do you know I don't think I really saw or heard anything until the Sorting was well over, and Dumbledore had blustered through another airy speech, and James had stuck his hand out, said, "Black, huh? I've heard of your family. Ever eaten rattlesnake?" and I had avoided making the terrible faux-pas of defending my family against unspoken insults. All I saw were starbursts, all I felt was shock, awe, an odd happy relief—Gryffindor, Remus, I was a Gryffindor.

And so were you.

I confess, I may not have noticed you if it hadn't been for James. But he turned to you after I assured him that I had never eaten rattlesnake, that I never planned on eating rattlesnake, and that he was perhaps a little bit crazy to even suggest that I would, and after Peter had interjected, saying he'd heard that rattlesnake was actually very good, and then James drew you in with one smile. I saw the way it happened, the way your shoulders descended and your barriers fell a little, the tiniest amount, and I never again thought of you as timid.

038.

It is so dark in here, like the dungeons on miserable evenings in November, except sadder, of course, with the air full of dank hopelessness. I never know if it's morning or night, except sometimes people from the government come by, and I guess they only come in the daytime.

I am trying to remember the way it felt when we first became friends, real friends, not friends because it was convenient, but friends because we couldn't  _not_  be. James and I were faster than you and I, or you and James, or Peter and any of us; we were readier to trust than you, readier to be open than Peter. But you and I, Remus, when did it happen for us?

I hate the way my memory works, mixing up the way I know you now with the way I knew you then. It's inconceivable, for instance, that there was a time when you were not Moony, but I believe that I was your friend long before I knew about your lycanthropy. Maybe you would disagree, but I think it happened in the autumn of first year. James and I had pulled a dumb joke on the Slytherins, cursing their breakfast plates so that their food would burn, charred to ash as soon as it appeared from the kitchens, and you found us laughing in the common room at four in the morning, crying with it.

And you stood there, on the steps in your striped pyjamas, looking pale and tired (it must have been around the full moon, if you weren't sleeping) and you looked at us, and without any explanation, us saying nothing at all, you started laughing, too. James was laughing so hard he was snorting, his hands over his mouth like he could catch the sounds, and I was nearly howling, and you were standing apart from us but a part of us, shoulders shaking with silent hysterical laughter, which was the way you always laughed when you really meant it. And that was it, for me, I guess. We were friends, because sometimes it wasn't convenient.

040.

It has been more than three years, according to the  _Monde Magique_  some French dignitary gave me yesterday.

Harry is four and you are twenty-four and so am I, I guess, although I don't believe there's a point to keeping track of myself anymore.

I hope Harry is all right. I hope he's happy. Do you think he's happy, Remus? I wish that you could have raised him. You would make a wonderful father, you would. Harry would have grown up brave and smart and sensible, like you; not horribly rash like me, nor terribly cocky like James, nor as angry as Lily sometimes was. I would be able to breathe easier, if I knew that you and Harry were together out there.

044.

James brought it up first.

He and I were alone in the library, late on a Monday night because we hadn't finished our Charms essays yet and Flitwick was beginning to get fed up with us—he lasted longer than most of our professors, waiting until second year to lay down the line. The moon was waxing, and you'd been getting more and more distant. It was worse that year than first year, because we swore we knew you, but still you weren't always  _there_  the way we were.

I was writing my Charms essay, but James was thinking, his eyes never leaving the first sentence of the sixty-fifth page of the book he was meant to be citing. "Do you think?" As if that were a complete question and I ought to answer straightaway.

"Often," I told him. "About various topics, in fact. Is there one in particular you were interested in?"

I could tell he was not in the mood for me from the way he still didn't look up from that book. "Remus," he said, after a heavy pause.

For a moment I thought he suspected, as I was beginning to suspect, that I was not as interested in what was beneath Lily Evans's skirt as I was interested in what was beneath your trousers, but then he glanced up and his eyes were serious, and I thought,  _no, it's about Remus, not you, you git_ , and I said, simply, "All the time."

"You don't believe his stories either, then?" James asked me, his lips barely moving, as if he half-expected me to read his mind.

"Hardly."

James glanced around; there was only one other occupied table, but he stood up anyway, shoving his books and papers into his bag with an imperiousness that only grew with time. "Come on, your Charms grade isn't important." He left the library before I could even protest, and I followed him.

We went to an empty classroom halfway between Gryffindor and the library, and James locked the door.

"Do you have any theories?" he asked me, and I knew then that he was thinking the same thing I was, but neither of us wanted to say it.

"I have," and then I sighed. I still remember the stretch of that sigh, the taste of it, the way it was a little like surrender. "I have one." And I looked at James and said, "Werewolf?"

He nodded. A tiny, small nod.

"Should we talk to Peter about it?" I asked.

"Of course." That's the way we were then,  _of course_ , obvious. It kills me now. But then it was "Of course," and then, "and then we'll talk to Remus."

"But we need to help him. How will we help him?" I asked.

"We'll think of something." James smiled. "We'll make it all better."

046.

The first time, we were thirteen.

You must remember it. November, again, searching for another way to sneak out of the castle. Peter and James were down in the dungeons, and you and I had taken the second storey, thinking (rightly) that the passageways might be in less obvious places. Filch was around and we were trying to talk softly, even though it wasn't quite curfew yet.

We had found a room behind a tapestry of two fighting trolls, and you stopped at the centre of it while I tapped my wand against the walls.

You said, I remember the exact wording of it, "Why do we even want to find ways out? Aren't you happy enough here, Sirius?"

"It's not about getting out," I told you, "or about happiness," although most things, at age thirteen, were, "it's about knowing how to escape, if we ever wanted to."

"We?" you asked me, voice tiny tiny tiny in that little room.

"Well, of course, we. I'd never leave you behind."

You kissed me. You kissed me, it was brief and light and unencumbered by all the agonies that carried our kisses through to the end—so damn near chaste it broke my heart.

I had said, "I'd never leave you behind," when you had expected me to say, "We'd never leave you behind," and the room was so small that you were two steps away from me, so when I surprised you by saying that, you came towards me because—well, you loved me, then, too, didn't you?—and your lips were dry and quick on mine.

Then you jerked away, cheeks red in an instant, eyes shut, hands fisted in horror, and I followed you back, my fingers fast around your wrists, saying, "Remus, Remus, Remus, don't look like that, don't, I—" but you interrupted, said, "We can't, Sirius," and I accepted that. I didn't think we could, either.

I felt sick for days, though, because for a moment I had felt as if you and I were boundless.

049.

Peter said, "He's a what?," in a high voice, but not a judgemental one.

"Shut up," James reprimanded, jumpy even though we were in an empty classroom at midnight and Peeves had been distracting Filch for the last hour at least.

"We think he's a werewolf. And we need to show him that that is all right," I said, eyeing Peter.

If he hadn't been so good then, if he hadn't loved you the way we did, I would not be in Azkaban. It would have been over, for me, if he hadn't said, "Of course it's all right, but, Merlin, fuck, how long?"

"We don't know," James told him. "We haven't talked to him yet."

"We're just making an educated guess," I explained, and James nodded and Peter nodded.

"Yeah, it'll be better if we're all together when we talk to him, anyway," Peter said, "It'll show him we all care."

It's funny how I miss  _that_ Peter, while currently I hate him more than I hate myself.

053.

I sometimes think that I will die. And I am sometimes disappointed when I don't.

062.

This is the memory I keep coming back to:

You were alone in the common room until we came in.

Your smile slipped when you saw how serious we looked, though. We sat in the chairs and couches around you and were silent until James kicked me in the shin.

"You are a terrible liar," is what I said.

And your face went so white, I had never seen anything that white before. I wanted to take your face in my hands and give you all my colour. All my red blood and freckles and the chocolate smear below my mouth, I wanted that to be yours. I wanted you healthier.

"Not that it matters," I continued on, James having kicked me out of my apologetic musings, "but we really would rather you had told us. It took us a long time to sort it out on our own."

And you shut your eyes as if you could rewind it all, erase it all, take back those two years of friendship to keep your secret safe, and James snapped, "Merlin, Sirius, way to be sensitive. What he means is, Remus, your furry little problem doesn't matter in the least to us, and we want you to know that we're here for you, just as we would be here for you if your mum really were ill."

"Furry little problem?" Peter repeated. "And you accuse Sirius of being insensitive?"

You still had your eyes shut and your lips were caught somewhere between the twist of a sob and a smile. I reached out and grabbed your hand from where it sat on your thigh and squeezed it, hard, for just a second before releasing you because we didn't touch, then, hardly at all. And we all sat there in silence for ages, ages, until you opened your eyes and a tear fell out.

"You're not going to tell everyone?" you asked. "Or run away screaming?"

"Of course not," Peter said.

"Sirius and I have been thinking," James continued.

"And we think we might know of a way to help you," I finished.

Really we ended up helping all of us.

063.

Furry little problem.

Oh, James. Prongs, my friend.

069.

Do you remember when I spent the summer with the Potters, and you came to visit one day? The time James pushed you into their pool, and you came up drenched and sputtering, and I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe?

And then you got out and shook yourself like a dog, got water all over me, and I turned into Padfoot and tackled you, licking your face until all I could taste was chlorinated water and you, and James had gotten bored and wandered off, and then I turned back into me, still on your chest, and we stayed there, with my ear against your heart and your hand on my back, beneath my shirt, until James caught us with a light stinging hex and we had to run after him.

I don't know if I've ever felt like I fit anywhere as much as I did in those minutes with you.

073.

"Are you mad?" you said.

"Possibly," James admitted, while I stridently refused, "No, we are brilliant."

"But Animagi?" You said the word like it was a mystery.

"Easy as pie."

"Which is also something you don't know how to do, Sirius."

"We're clever. We'll work it out."

"You're also only twelve," you pointed out. "How on earth are you going to 'work it out?'" Your beautiful fingers made quick work of the air quotes.

"Well, it might take a while," I admitted.

"But it'll happen. We swear." That was Peter. Always the optimist.

You were silent for a while. "How do you care this much about me?" you finally asked.

"How could we not?" I replied.

How could I not?

075.

It happened in whispers behind the curtains of my bed and the protection of a Silencing Charm early in our sixth year. You were kissing too fast and I was kissing too slow; all I wanted was to spend hours there with you, eradicating any lingering self-consciousness, showing you how unbearably perfect you were. I remember getting your shirt off, and how nervous you were about me seeing your skin, but that night you denied me nothing. I saw all those scars, white and raised, and I wanted to kill the man who had done that to you.

I kissed you along the scars, slow, slow, slow and your head went back as my teeth scraped along the edges of them, searching for the salt of your skin under the clean taste of your soap. Your breath rasped coming up, saying, "I, fuck, I  _love_ you."

And I kissed and kissed until I could barely taste me anymore, my mouth was all full of you, and then you pushed me off and murmured, "Sirius, let me," but your murmur was really more like a plea and you wanted me just as much as I wanted you.

Your hands made fast work of my trousers and pants and why had we bothered wearing clothes before we started, anyway, and then your mouth was everywhere, at once, it seemed. I couldn't get my hands anywhere, they were just running and jumping and settling nowhere and you were, "Merlin," you said, your breath cooling my skin, "you taste like everything good, everything, and," and then your lips hit mine and our mouths were full of each other.

Sensations like electricity, like lightning, burst in all the places we touched until I pulled away, breathing, "Fuck, Remus, you're  _mine_ ," and I said it so desperately that you couldn't possibly have denied it, even if you had wanted to, but you never did want to, because you loved me just as much, which was either too much or not enough.

080.

I've worked it out. Eighty months, nearly seven years.

I like it better when I have no idea of all the time that's passing.

084.

I keep thinking of Harry, growing up without Lily and James. Hagrid said he was taking him to his aunt's, Lily's sister's. She never really talked about Petunia to me, although I know James hated her.

I hope he's okay.

I know your life is not going at all the way you expected it to, but I wish I knew that you were looking in on Harry, every once in a while. I wish I knew that he were all right.

I said, years ago, that wishes were dead. I seem to be making more and more of them, the more time I spend here.

That's probably not very smart, but what else do I have left, Remus? I don't even have you.

You have me, though.

085.

You must not want me. I wonder if you would, if you knew that I am innocent.

I wish you knew.

089.

Some days (nights? weeks?) I imagine that you tear through the doors here, wild and wolfy, come to save me.

Dementors wouldn't touch  _you_ , Moony.

093.

The second time we were fourteen and a half.

I had gone on a date (a laughable thing, really, that young—I think it was with Alice, which makes it even funnier) and I came back to the dormitory around ten and you were in the common room with the others. The moon was waning and you had been fine, earlier that day, but you disappeared up the stairs only minutes after I joined the lot of you.

I asked James what the matter was. He shrugged and said you had mentioned that you had a lot of homework to do. Peter said he thought you might have gotten a stomach-ache from the pudding at dinner, most likely because Peter himself had a stomach-ache from the pudding, and I remembered the way you'd said, "We can't, Sirius," and the way we'd gone silent for weeks after, until James had taken each of us aside separately to work out what the matter was, and we returned to normal because hurting James was worse than hurting ourselves.

It didn't take long for me to give up and go upstairs to find you. You were lying on the bed, face buried in your pillow, and I wanted to stretch myself out beside you, breathe the same cotton fibres you were breathing, tell you how desperate I felt when I thought of you.

But I was too young for those feelings, and you had said we couldn't, and so I sat cross-legged on my bed and told you, "It was a rubbish date, in case you were wondering." I don't think it was, really, but I hadn't been with you, so it was comparatively rubbish.

"Why'd you ask her out then?" Your voice was muffled by the pillow. You were mature enough not to add, "Not that I care," although I wouldn't have been surprised if you had. I would have.

I don't remember what I told you. I'm sure it wasn't a satisfactory answer, because you just huffed into your pillow and didn't say anything.

I know that I said, "It's not a big deal, Remus. It's not like it meant anything."

And then you swung yourself out of bed and you were livid, eyes bright, and I don't think I have ever seen you that angry, before or since, and you stood there, hands shaking, skinny arms looking immensely dangerous.

"Do  _I_?" you asked.

Do you mean anything? That question floored me then, it floors me now, it replaces the air in my lungs with concrete.

It breaks my heart, to think that you didn't know.

"Remus," I wasn't brave enough, I didn't know enough, but I reached for you in a terrible facsimile of the first time, clasping my hands around your shaking wrists, "Of  _course_ ," and I stood and took a soft kiss that I will never give back, not even if you ask for it.

"We can't," we said at the same time, as we came apart, and, "I won't go out with any more girls," I told you, but you said, "That's not fair to you," and I said, "They don't matter, though, so it isn't fair to anyone for me togo out with them," but none of that was a problem because we said, "We can't," but both of us knew that we wanted to.

096.

How mad, now, to think of what we did—how mad, but how right, as well. What else would you have had us do? Nothing, while you bit yourself and the furniture and yourself again and screamed and screamed under a trembling roof? No, it was better to have us there. We all thought so, and I know you did too, when you weren't feeling stupidly guilty.

I remember the first time I saw you transform, you were—Merlin, Moony, I could never tell you this, but I was absolutely terrified of you and astounded by you and stunned that you were Remus, my Remus, and also Moony, and raw, and terrifically fantastic. Sitting there, as Padfoot, waiting for the transformation to end—it was agonising, and how I  _loved_ you, then. You were—are, I hope—frightening, maddening, utterly wild. I froze that first night, seeing you. If James hadn't moved forward and touched his muzzle to your trembling nose, I think I would have just stared at you all night. I think you would have stared back.

098.

James and Lily's wedding is a blur of white in my head these days.

I remember laughing, feeling buoyant.

I remember thinking that everything was going to be perfect from then until the end.

I remember telling you that I loved you, and thinking that even they—Lily and James—did not understand how much.

That's absurd, of course, but some days I could barely look at you, I loved you so much.

104.

September of fifth year was a long time away from November of second, but it was naive of me to expect us to work out the Animagus thing quickly. When we finally managed it, in an abandoned classroom down in the dungeons, you nearly fell off your desk you were so surprised.

Me as a dog; James as a stag; Peter as a rat; you as you—wasn't it perfect, Moony, the way it all worked?

I still can't remember who came up with the nicknames. Oh, I know I gave you Moony. Peter probably gave me Padfoot, I gave James Prongs—and was it you who named Peter Wormtail? I hope so.

At the time I wondered if Padfoot could get away with more than I could. Remember how I used to come up to you, press my nose against your leg because I wanted you to pet me—because I wanted to know whether you would touch me.

You just pushed me away, though. I suppose you saw through it all.

105.

Thank Merlin for it, though. It's second nature now, being a dog. (Oh, the jokes we used to make about that.)

108.

It was the very end of fourth year, and life was starting to feel overwhelming and huge. Particularly when the moon was full, or in its gibbous stages, or new and empty and we were all fitful, anxious. You, most of all; I remember you just after May's full moon, when you had injured yourself, you had a cut on your arm that oozed an awful amount of blood. You stayed in the hospital wing so long my eyes stopped looking for you in your bed, your absence hit me so hard, but when you were finally released we weren't even there for you.

I got back to the dormitory first, found you sitting up on your bed, your arm held in a white bandage across your chest and your head tilted back against your pillow. You were always paler after the full moon, and you seemed even worse this time, because of the bandage and the lethargic way you were sitting. It scared me, seeing you like that.

"All right?" was all I said.

"Been better," but you smiled at me, so I knew you were going to be fine.

112.

The third time is the hardest to remember.

That's a lie. It's the easiest to remember here, but it's the hardest to recount.

It was after the second month we went out with you, and you and I had gotten into a fight; Prongs had needed to pry us off of each other, and Wormtail had bit my tail to get my mind back on track. I woke up the next morning a bit bruised, with surface scratches down my legs and an oval of red marks where your teeth had gripped my shoulder.

I washed, everything stinging; I still had some red scrapes on the pads of my fingers—apparently my paws were not quite as resilient as I had thought they were—but I assumed that when you returned from the Shrieking Shack things would continue on as normal. After all, we'd fought as humans before. Why would this be different?

Then you found us practising for Charms in an empty classroom, shut the door, and looked around, face set. "This is over."

"What is, Moony?" James didn't look up from the book he was reading.

"You're not coming with me anymore."

The three of us stared at you; you didn't even shift your feet.

"We are," James said, reasonably.

"No. You are not," you said, unreasonably.

"You try to stop us. We'll come anyway." I had spent three years of my life studying some of the most agonising spells existent to be able to be with you, you were not about to stop me.

" _You_  will not." You pointed at me, your hand shaking, and I noticed a violet bruise snaking its way along your bare forearm. I had done that, I realised. But you had done the same to me. Fair trade, I thought.

"But, Moony," Peter began. You glared at him, eyes hard, and he shut up.

"Remus," I said. "Look, we've gotten in fights before. Why is this different?"

"Because I could  _kill_ you, Sirius. You could die because of me. Or, worse," and you gulped down air like you were drowning, "you could become like me."

"He couldn't," James interrupted, because I was still struggling with the  _worse_ , with the idea that you would rather have been dead than a werewolf, "we can't be affected when we're animals, which is why we became Animagi, which you know."

"But what if I hurt one of you so badly that you can't maintain the spell, and you turn human again? What then?"

"That didn't even seem like a possibility last night, Remus." I tried to put a hand on your shoulder but you turned away from me, so angry, so scared.

"It's not going to happen," Peter spoke up. "I did research on that, it's never happened."

"But it  _could_ , and how could I—what would I do, if I killed you," your eyes were wild as you looked at me, and you hurried to add, "any of you?"

"But it's probably impossible." James came to stand behind me. "Remus, Sirius is completely fine—you look worse than he does, to be honest—and we are not going to leave you alone on a full moon ever again. Never." We lied so innocently, so naively back then.

"We  _need_ to be with you," I explained, "it makes it better for everyone, please don't deny that."

And then you crossed that miniscule but ghastly space between us and kissed me, hard this time, so hard. When you pulled away you said, "You do not  _understand me_."

You left.

James and Peter stared after you, and then looked at me, and I said nothing. For long moments of terrible silence I said nothing. And then I admitted, "We can't."

"How long?" James asked. He sounded tired. I remember that, Moony, the way he sounded so exhausted with all of it.

"Forever," because time was not a real concept, when it came to us; we stretched beyond it in every way, or I thought we did, "but only three times, we've only ever admitted it three times."

James held onto me while I broke, and Peter brought me chocolate, and you were alone, Remus, and I could not bear it.

And that is your voice saying, "You do not  _understand me_ ," over and over in my head, cold and terrible and I loved you. Madly, Moony, I loved you madly.

115.

I speak as if you have died, but I hope you know that really I'm the one who's gone.

120.

James went to find you. I wanted to, but he told me it ought to be him. I don't know what he said to you. I imagine it was something brotherly and firm. Something obvious but real, like, "We love you. Sirius loves you. Get your head out of your arse."

But I don't know. James came up to me late that evening and told me you were in the Owlery and that you would probably see me, if I wanted to see you, and I told him he was daft, of course I wanted to see you, and I borrowed his cloak and there you were, by the wide open windows at the edge of the room. It was cold and your breath was in the air; mine was, too, and you saw the white ribbons before I became visible again.

"Hello, Padfoot."

"Moony." I tugged the cloak off, dropped it in the corner farthest from the soft hooting and rustling movements of the owls.

"That was rather public, wasn't it." You weren't asking a question, so I didn't answer you. I stood beside you, my hands in the pockets of my robes, and stared out at the Forest.

"Did I really hurt you last night?"

"What?" You glanced at me. "No, of course not, you idiot. Did I hurt you?"

"No."  _Of course not, you idiot_.

Silence stretched and stretched un-breaking.

"Except," I finally said, "why do you always say we can't?"

"You say it, too," you pointed out.

"But you said it first." Stupid, like it mattered.

"But you agreed."

"I did. But sometimes, Remus, I feel like—"

Here is what I wanted to say: I feel like I will die if you don't touch me; like you are the fucking sun; like the way you look at me could kill an angel; like we are drowning in each other, drowning and drowning and drowning and happy about it; like your hands are the wind and I am the trees; like you are the King of Hearts and I am the King of Spades; like you are a drug and I am the vein you belong in; like you love me.

Here is what I said: "—we could."

You did not say anything for fifteen seconds.

I did not breathe for fifteen seconds.

"But, Sirius," you finally said, "there are  _rules_ —"

"Fuck them," I said. "Honestly, Remus. I understand." That word tasted bitter, so acrid after  _You do not_ understand me. "I get it," I rushed, to cover up the lingering sense of wrongness that word carried, "that you are already carrying stupid prejudices up to your ears, that you can barely even think of handling more, but, Remus, I could help you handle this one. This one I do understand, completely, down to my bones. This one I want to take on with you."

"That was mean of me," you said, "to say that you don't get it. You try so damn hard to get it, and you do, more than anyone else, you do, and I'm sorry, I'm—"

"You're avoiding the real issue," I interrupted, and that was rude of me, I'm sorry, love, "which means, I guess, you don't want to try?"

You reached out your hand and pulled mine from my pocket, twisting our fingers together until I could barely see for the force of touching you, being touched by you.

"I do, I do, I love you." You said loudly, clearly, and whenever I made a Patronus, back when I had a wand, that was the memory I used. Your voice, dry the way it got in the evenings, saying, "I do, I do, I love you."

And mine, right away, saying, "Good. I love you, too."

125.

The fourth time was a week after you told me you loved me, do you remember?

We were sitting next to each other in the library. James and Peter had been there, at the seats across from us, but they had left and we were alone, surrounded by books.

I had finished my work already, but I kept flipping through the book we were reading for Defence. I didn't want to leave you alone.

You glanced over at me at some point, realised I wasn't really reading, said, "Hey," softly, and I turned my head to look at you, to find you right there.

You had the briefest smile on your lips before they touched mine, and this kiss was hard and long and my tongue invaded your mouth and your tongue invaded mine and have I ever told you that you tasted like French mustard?

Your mouth was a delicacy.

127.

I keep cursing time, remembering things that happened so long ago. Like Harry.

We were at my flat, you and me and Peter, and Lily Flooed in, looking livid.

"Where the bloody fuck is James?"

"Beyond me," Peter said.

"What's wrong?" you asked.

"He might be with Dumbledore," I supplied.

"I have just found out that I am pregnant," Lily announced, answering you, "and he is not  _here_."

We all went a bit hysterical then, but I managed to retain enough sense to Floo Dumbledore and ask if he'd seen James. He said he had, briefly, and that he'd said he was going home.

So then I Flooed the house in Godric's Hollow and there James was, looking worried, and I said, "You'd better come, Lily's pregnant and crazy," which was perhaps not the best way to break the news of James's coming prodigy to him. But they still loved me enough to make me Harry's godfather.

And look where that got him.

Do you think he's safe at Hogwarts? Do you think he's happy? I hope he finds someone to love the way we all loved one another.

I hope he's whole.

129.

Sometimes I wish I could relive our sixth and seventh years, and the year after, just have it all happen over again. Falling in love with you and you falling back in love with me—there were many moments in those years that I would be happy to stay in for eternity.

Waking up on a Saturday after the others had left the dormitory, and you had crawled into my bed and had fallen all over me, the way you used to, arms spread, ankles holding my ankles, teeth slightly against my shoulder—not hard or anything, just there. Waking up to that, to you around and on me, on a Saturday in our sixth year, and I wondered whether people had known how to love before we started at it, or if we had reinvented it, made it better, more real.

Sneaking out to Hogsmeade with you one Thursday night, just you and me, at the Three Broomsticks, where Madam Rosmerta gave you Firewhiskey even though she really oughtn't to have, and we both got raging drunk, so drunk, and you shouted, "I love Sirius Black," when we stumbled out of the pub and then you pressed your whole hand to your mouth and said, "Shhh it's a secret you can't know," to me and I kissed you so hard and so long that my mouth still burnt with your taste the next morning (which was not a nice morning but we suffered it together and that made it nicer).

That time when we were all sitting at the Gryffindor table at breakfast, and you reached out a hand to wipe some jam off my cheek, and you let your fingertips drift down and they dug in there, a little, your nails lingering just long enough to leave tiny half-moons along my jaw, and then you leaned across the table, like you just couldn't help it, and you kissed me, and I knew people were staring and you knew people were staring but neither of us gave a damn.

The first time Lily and James let us babysit Harry, and he cried for so long that we thought he might run out of tears, and I walked around the place holding him, and you kept humming this song your mum had sang to you when you were little, and when Harry stopped crying he held out his tiny soft hands towards you and you took him and didn't let go of him the rest of the night, and he didn't cry again, not once while you were holding him.

After a particularly horrendous full moon, when you felt like the whole world was against you, and I lay in your bed while you sat at the foot, not touching me, but saying everything. How it was growing up, about how much it hurt, letting me in deeper, letting me see so much more of you than anyone else, and after, when you crawled back towards me and kissed me once and buried your face in my chest and sighed, like you'd come home.

131.

This is the worst:

I remember waiting for you after James saved Severus from that idiotic prank I had planned for him.

I couldn't sit still, I couldn't stand still, I was going mad. James wasn't speaking to me, Peter had called me a prat, and Severus knew and could have ruined everything, and it was all my fault. I hadn't spoken to you about it, and it was terrible, horrible, the way I knew that it would be perfectly reasonable for you to cut me out of your life entirely.

And then you came walking—no, striding—out of the hospital wing. You saw me, your eyes blitzed, and you gestured for me to follow you. We got to an empty classroom and you shoved me inside, shutting the door so hard that the sound echoed up in the stone ceiling of the room.

"You," and you hit me, punched me in the gut, "utter," another fist, "fucking," and another, " _imbecile_." And then you fell back against the wall and covered your face with hands, which were red from hitting me.

I couldn't say anything.

"You hate him so much more," you lowered your hands, hit me with a terrible stare, "so much more than you love me."

That made no sense to me, so, "I  _don't_ ," I said.

"You do," you returned. "Sirius, you just don't  _see_  it. But you would sacrifice me—my sanity, my happiness, my secret—just to injure him. I might have killed him, and don't you know how that would have ended everything for me?

"You wouldn't have," I told you. I was right, you couldn't have. "I was there, I was going to stop you from doing anything."

"And then everyone would have known about  _you_ , Sirius. Merlin, it's so fucked up and twisted. Do you know?" Then you laughed, a bitter, harsh sound. "I actually feel jealous of how much you hate him. At least you would give up everything for him."

My brain stopped.

You left.

133.

James didn't speak to me for two weeks after the Severus incident; Peter lasted seventeen days; you lasted a horrible thirty.

I didn't ask Peter or James to intercede on my behalf; I deserved the silent treatment, and I—I don't think I've ever told you—I needed the time. How was it possible, I wondered, for me to behave as if one cruel, foolish idiot mattered even a centimetre more than you? You were it, for me. I knew that, I wished that I had never made you doubt it.

On the thirtieth day of silence between us, I cleared James and Peter and Frank out of the room and waited for you on my bed. You didn't come until close to eleven, and when you saw that it was just me you were about to turn around, but then you straightened your back and came all the way into the room and said, "Yes, Sirius?" just so...sadly, so calmly, that I wanted to marry you right then, I loved you so much.

"I should never ever have done that. I should have known that nothing good would come of it—he's just a nosy git, and I shouldn't have let him get to me, but—but that doesn't matter because what does matter is that I love you and fuck, Remus, not talking to you has been like not having a heartbeat or eyes or something very important. I feel like," but I stopped talking because you had flinched and opened your own mouth and it was your voice I wanted more than anything.

"You do understand, don't you, that if you do something like that again—something that jeopardises me at the full moon, my integrity, my sanity, or someone else's safety in regards to me—then we are over. Actually over. Never speaking again." You swallowed visibly. "I love you, Sirius, and it would kill me, but I would leave you, if that happened again."

"Of course," I said, "Of course. I promise."

You nodded and turned and opened the door, and James and Peter and Frank were there, blushing. "You may as well come in," you said to them, "Sirius is not getting any tonight."

It's not like I really expected to, honest. At least I had you again.

135.

You lasted a horrible thirty days. The worst—the very worst—of all those days was the fourteenth. You went thirty days without speaking to me, but on the fourteenth, you tore me apart.

I was walking from the library to Gryffindor Tower and you came striding down the hall toward me—I could see you coming for practically ages, it was just us in the hall and it hurt—and I'd never seen you look like that, haven't since—your eyes were nearly black, your skin flushed, you looked, well, angry—livid, actually—horny, terrifying.

My mouth went dry when you got near to me, and then we passed each other, me nodding, you not saying a word, and suddenly I felt your body against mine, your hands pushing me out of the corridor and into a classroom. They fisted in my robes, your hot hands, and you shoved me back against the blackboard.

Your breaths were coming hot and fast in my face and I opened my mouth, only getting out a quiet, "Remus," before your right hand let go of my robes and pressed over my lips, fingertips shutting me up.

Your forehead met mine next. You felt like you were running a temperature, the way it burned against mine, and you pressed forward hard, hard, hard, until I thought my head might break backwards through the blackboard, and you might come all the way forward and we'd just be the same person, finally, and then you dropped your hand and angled your face a little so you could kiss me.

Snarling, that's how it felt, your teeth on my lip, your tongue struggling, insistent, you tasting incongruently of something sweet, chocolate, probably. Your hands were on the blackboard, your arms caging me, and later I noticed that you'd left sweaty handprints on the blackboard, salt marks among the chalk.

You were flush against me, hard against me. You bit and bit and left a mark below my ear. Your nails scratched my stomach, once you got through my robes and shirt, robes undone and shoved unceremoniously back, hanging stuck around my arms, shirt rucked up to give you access to the skin of my stomach, so your nails could dig there. I bit and bit my lip as you raked my skin, I tasted blood when your hands drifted down and undid my trousers and you didn't even look as you jerked me off, didn't even shift your gaze from the blackboard behind my head. You burnt me to pieces, the way it was so casual for you, like some fucking job, while I was coming apart at the seams, the way I did whenever you were near me.

Having you touch me after two weeks of not even having you speak to me was ecstasy; having you touch me from such an emotional distance was the worst punishment you could have dreamt up, and I suppose that's why you did it. When I finished, shaking under your hands, under your familiar orgasmic fingers, which were acting so terribly harsh, you wiped remnants of my come on my shirt, turned—even though you were hard yourself—and left me alone.

I don't know if you told James where to find me, or if he was checking the Map and saw my name lingering in that classroom, but he did come eventually.

He found me slumped against the wall; I'd refastened my trousers and discarded the robe entirely, my t-shirt was tugged down, although I'm sure I smelled shameful and looked filthy.

"Fuck, Sirius." James stood in the doorway to the room. "Remus did this to you?"

Well. "I deserved it, I guess."

"This?" James shook his head. "No, I don't think you did."

I didn't say anything for a while, and James moved to perch on one of the desks in the front row.

Finally, I asked him, "Do you think I hate Snape more than I love Remus?"

He snorted. "I think you're immature and stupid. I think we all are. I think the only thing you actually know how to do well is fuck up, and I think that eventually you'll learn that depth of feeling means very little compared to actions." Which didn't really answer my question, although now I think it may have.

"Do you think we'll ever be all right again?"

"I am almost positive you will be."

And that was a relief, even though I still tasted blood in my mouth.

137.

Two weeks after you started speaking to me again I was looking at the Map and saw your name in that empty classroom, the one I was trying desperately to scrub from my memory.

But there you were, your name not moving on the Map, and so I made my way slowly down to there. I paced outside the closed door for a good minute before I finally tapped and pushed it open.

You sat on the ground by the blackboard, in nearly the same position I'd been in when James found me, except you didn't look at all wrecked, and I crossed the room and took up James's seat on the desk.

You stared at my trainers, your face tense.

"I am so," you said, "so unbelievably  _sorry_."

I set my hands in fists on my thighs. "You were angry. With reason."

"But I," you dragged your hands down your face, "I treated you like utter shit."

"And I almost informed the whole school of your wolfishness  _and_  turned you into a murderer in one go, so really, you had the right to treat me like shit."

"No, not like that, I didn't." You looked up at my face, and I wished you hadn't. I wished you had kept your eyes on my feet. "You know, I made it as far as the bathroom three doors down, wanked in a stall and cried like a five year old?"

I was silent for a long time.

"Please, please, be honest with me right now." Your voice sounded fragile.

"Well," I slid from the desk to the floor, reached out to tap one hand against your shoe, "I understand why you did it. I wish you hadn't," and you nodded, one sharp movement of your head, "but I do get it. You'll remember I didn't exactly try to stop you," you nodded again, "so we were both there, we were both idiots, we both made mistakes—and mine was eons more serious, Moony—and I love you, and you love me, and I suppose we can carry on, knowing that we've hurt each other." You blinked. "People do that, you know. We hurt each other. It's sort of the way these things go."

You smiled at me then, slowly. Merlin, I wanted to crawl into your lap and never leave. Instead, I took your hand and led you from that room. I never went back there. I don't know if you did or not.

138.

There came a time when I only needed to mention the Astronomy Tower to make your skin flush. I don't know if the others noticed this and just decided to ignore it, or if they really were oblivious to the way I'd say, on clear and lazy Wednesday evenings, that I needed to review the stars for Astronomy, and the way you'd glance up, sharp, eyes hazed already, skin reddening up your collarbone, neck, ears, and say, "My notes are all rubbish. Mind if I come along?"

Once James told us we tried too hard at Astronomy, it didn't really help anyone out, and you laughed and said that you had a particular connection to the night sky and I said that I was named after a fucking star and he really ought to consider who he's talking to before he goes off on Astronomy because it's a very important and precise field of study and he held up his hands, said, "Okay," long and slow, and exchanged a smirk with Peter—which leads me to believe that they had figured it out.

It hadn't been intended; we actually were doing work for Astronomy, the first time. I dragged you up there, because I was behind on my star charts and I wanted company, and I knew if James came we would end up coming up with a prank to pull on the Slytherins and I wouldn't get my work done and you would get annoyed with us, because you were meant to be making us behave but we refused to stay in any lines, and Peter was studying for a Potions exam with Lily, so it was you I asked, and I expected us to sit up there, you with a book and me with a telescope, for maybe an hour.

It was cold and the sky was stuck all over with stars. You conjured a pale fire on one of the stones as I set up my telescope and you began reading a book you'd borrowed from Evans, something Muggle and American and delicious, you said, although I was distracted from your occasional sighs by the patterns in the sky above us.

"Sirius," you said at one point. I hummed a response, marking down a particularly tricky along the first downward angle of Cassiopeia.

"Sirius," you repeated, sounding nearer. I glanced away from my chart to see that you had set your book on the ground and gotten up; you were a step or two behind me, and I raised my eyebrows.

"Remus?"

"Will you just," you were nearly growling, "get  _over_  here?"

"Um," I dropped my star chart just before you got to me, your hands fisting in my robe and for a moment I had a thought of you pushing me through the door of an empty classroom up against a blackboard until I was flattened against it, almost in it, and then you—the present you, the one under the stars—kissed me with open lips and a tongue tangling on mine, curling around mine, and I loved you for your anger and for your softness.

"You," I told you, when I pulled my mouth from yours for a moment, "make me so fucking happy, all the time."

You had been biting at my neck, light scrapes with your teeth, and at that you dropped your forehead there, into the curve between my neck and shoulder, and gripped the back of my robes so we were flush against each other, so my robes tightened across my shoulder-blades, so I couldn't see your face. And you breathed into and out of me, heavy breaths, like you were a heart and I was your blood and you were pulsing with me.

I held you, held you, lowering my head to kiss at the skin of your neck, even though the angle was awkward and your robes were up around your ears, nearly, so I had to make room for myself to get at your skin—which seemed ridiculous, I should always be able to get to you.

And then you lifted your head up and kissed me on the lips, once, fast, and murmured, "I would really like it if you would take off my clothes." It was winter and our combined breaths were crowding visible around us and the stone beneath us was Siberian but I undid the clasp of your robes without thinking and shoved them from your shoulders, and undid your tie, next—why were you always wearing your tie, Moony?—and my fingers slipped in their hurry over the buttons on your shirt.

You weren't helping at all, just standing there as I undressed you, looking increasingly like sex as my hands moved over you, and I paused for a moment to kiss you, hard, and you sighed against my mouth as I moved away. It was the most beautiful sigh, Remus, the colour of a winter night, the sound of you and me hanging in the air.

You finally reached for me after I got your shirt off, finally did the same to me; your hands were quick and sure as they moved down the row of buttons, and then they swept over my skin and locked in place flat against my lower-back. The whole world was bright and my skin was bursting as I kissed and kissed you again.

We lost our trousers and our pants in delicious, abrupt movements, and I remember the slow rise of that climax, the way we burnt and the way the air hung cold around us, but you and I were so desperately close, touching in as many places as possible, one of your hands around us and the other gripping my neck, while mine moved everywhere. My skin stuttered with your touch and yours flared with mine; when we finally came, me first, you following, I bit your name into your shoulder and you shared mine with the moon.

I haven't seen the stars in years, but when I think of us beneath them I can almost picture them, until the dementors breathe and all is dark.

140.

I feel as if I have died. Not just died, but died, and gone to hell, and then had the doors opened for me.

Peter and Fudge, the names run together, roll together, meld and flee and my head is a maze but mazes always have exits.

Fudge and his newspaper and Peter: I found him, Remus, I found him. The boy, the boy with the large family and the brother in Egypt and the father at the Ministry and the rat, Wormtail. The boy who is in Gryffindor, the boy who has Peter the Rat, the rat who is missing a toe on his forepaw.

Moony, I might explode with this.

What if Voldemort stirs again? What if Peter attacks Harry? What if he kills him?

He cannot be allowed to, of course. But no one knows. Not even you, not even you, and I hate myself so much more now than I ever have for that omission. If someone knew—but it's just me, so of course, I need to stop him. Finish this, finally.

Of course, obviously, somehow.

Padfoot will never have served me better. I'm going to kill Peter, to save Harry.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye horrid memories.

141.

It is so strange out here.

The sun, and more often, the rain. I saw the stars last night, bright up there, and I thought of you, but I thought of my family first, us with our star names, and I felt fitful the whole night, like twelve years in prison and a lifetime of hatred still could not build a wall between myself and them. Still connected, somehow.

I've forgotten what life is like. I keep getting distracted by the smallest things, insignificant things. I stole an apple yesterday. It was one of those small winter ones, but Merlin, I sat there eating it slowly for an hour, just tasting it, feeling it. Everything tasted so dull, for years and years, and here I am, Moony, eating an apple and nearly dying from the ecstasy of it. Imagine if I could see you. Imagine. My heart would burn a hole in me, to get to you.

142.

I saw Harry. I think I may have frightened him. But seeing a big black dog in an alley, when you're not expecting it and are a little rough about the edges—of course he was scared.

He looks well, though, aside from being frightened. Fuck, he looks like James.

143.

You are here. You are here, you are here, you are here, and I cannot risk seeing you, or allowing you to see me. But I hear them talk about you, the students, and everyone _reveres_  you, Remus, it's glorious. It truly is the most glorious thing, to hear the way they respect you, to be free and hear the way everyone loves the man I love.

I want to go see you and explain everything to you, I want it so badly it becomes increasingly difficult to stay in the Shrieking Shack during the day, but I cannot jeopardise who you are in the school. Who you have become in this world that I am not a part of. I am so very proud of you, Moony, so terribly proud.

In avoiding you and the world I am communing with a cat—or a near-cat—who knows Harry. He does not seem overly fond of him, as far as I can tell, nor of his best mate, but he does seem affectionate towards the third member of their little trio, and he hates Peter and trusts me, which is—astounding. An animal treating me more humanely than I've been treated since that night—it shakes me to my core to not be hated, to not be feared.

144.

Twelve years exactly and I messed up. I messed up. I messed up.

But he is  _there_ , Remus, behind that stupid portrait. Just there, just ready, in location to kill Harry. Kill him, that boy who looks so much like his father, who has done so much—and is loved so much. I've seen, I've heard—a child and the world needs him, knows they need him. He is  _important_ , terribly important—to me, to you, to James and Lily, to his friends and all the people who've never even met him—and Peter is there, and how was I supposed to react when the Fat Lady would not allow me in? Me? She used to love me.

Canvas shreds so much more easily than flesh. I hate myself and I am scared because I want Peter to die for what he did, Remus, but I also want him to die to protect who he was, who we all were.

Twelve years, exactly, and I want to erase my memories now, more than ever. Even without the dementors around me, the bad ones keep coming up.

145.

The rain. The wind. The dementors, there because I am here. Harry, flying better than James ever did, if we're honest (I hope you're honest with him, Remus). He fell while I was leaving the stands, and my heart stopped, and his broomstick hit the Willow—my fault, my fault. You know, of course. I hope you've comforted him somehow. I am so very jealous that Harry is able to know you, that you're able to speak to him. To remind him, in some small way, of where he came from. I hope you've told him a little bit about James, about Lily, about the way he used to sleep all the way through rainstorms when he was little, but wake up when the moon was full. James told us that, once, you remember? Said he thought Harry knew how restless James was, how he wanted to be with us on the full moon, and neither of them could sleep till it was over.

Probably a load of rubbish, but it's something about Harry that I know and you know but he doesn't; did you tell him, Moony, how he was the best bravest, most well-loved baby in the world?

146.

I got him a Firebolt, I wish I could do more. Do you think he'll like it?

If I could have gotten you something for Christmas, Moony, I would have. But wouldn't you be a bit suspicious, to find a package of your favourite chocolates and a bottle of the best vintage Firewhiskey available and a soft scarf in your favourite green on your bed? Do people know these things about you? That you love chocolates with raspberry fillings and Firewhiskey with lines along the bottles from where the angel share's evaporated and that you love forest green, even though you're a Gryffindor to your very cells?

It's a terrible thing, that I hope no one knows these things about you. I hope that I have been it, am still it, because the thought of you with anyone else, anyone at all, twists jealousy everywhere in my body and I want to kiss you so hard that I occupy your whole world again.

147.

The full moon is tonight. What do you do now? Do they have potions for you? They must; everything's changed. Are you even still a werewolf, still Moony?

Stupid question, of course you are. Miracles like that couldn't happen without me seeing it in a borrowed paper.

I spend full moons as Padfoot, in the Forest, looking for you. I have this terrible fantasy, that you'll come upon me as a dog, and that as a wolf you'll see that I am innocent, the way the cat did.

Those fantasies always turn devastating, but still I think of them as I wander the Forest on the full moons.

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. You are howling madly somewhere, maybe, or sleeping wolf-like, and I miss you like that, too.

Stop being so near me and so far away; my brain pushes you over Peter, Peter over you, again and again, and I want to think of anyone else, but everyone else is the vaguest shape compared to my love and my traitor.

148.

This time, it went right. Or I thought it did. Everything was perfect, perfect, perfect, and then the boy was in his bed and he  _screamed_. Oh, Remus.

I never wanted to be feared. I just want Peter, so I can finally stop.

149.

The cat says that Peter has faked his death again and  _fuck_ , Remus, why has he not grown tired of running yet? If I were him, I would have wanted someone to end it years ago.

The thought of being him is like oil under my skin. I saw Harry yesterday; he was out on the grounds with his mates, and I was at the edge of the Forest, in the shadows. They didn't see me.

They all looked so serious—their world seems so much more tragic than ours was, at thirteen. They're in the midst of a war and they barely realise it, and still they know it more than most, more than most adults, they've seen more than most adults, too, haven't they? And they looked so serious yesterday. And then the ginger (Weasley?) said something to the girl (Granger?) and Harry laughed. He doesn't laugh like James—remember how he'd cover his mouth with his hand when he was really amused by something?—or like Lily—she used to just throw her head back, put her whole body into it, practically—he laughs like, well, like Harry, I suppose, and I am so...so  _grateful_  that he has grown up to be able to laugh like that. To be able to laugh at all.

150.

Being in the Shack again makes memories come back. Most are awful and maudlin and a little like digging up the dead. But sometimes I remember moments spent here that me ache with temporal dissonance, Moony, and it's terrible but also lovely.

This morning the air smelled too much like springtime, not enough like dust, too fresh, the way it did back when were at school. Before I opened my eyes, I almost expected it to be that morning, the one when I—Fuck, Moony, you must remember—we left you in the Shack, just before four, and we all went back to Gryffindor. When it got light out I came back to you—I don't know why, I was lonely, I guess.

I came through as Padfoot, just in case, but there you were, Remus, lying on the floor examining a cut on your right ankle by holding it up against your bent left knee and you didn't even look at me when I changed back into myself and sat next to you.

"The blood's dry," I pointed out, which was usually a good thing, in terms of your health.

"Yes." You picked at it a bit before dropping your hand. "How many scars do you think I'll get before I finally die, Padfoot?"

I hated that, the sound of the "finally" hanging in the air.

I looked at your ankle and the long thin line already there. I couldn't think of a single nice thing to say, so instead I told you, "This is selfish, but I hope you'll live long enough to be all over scars. You cannot die, Moony, until I am ready to die with you."

You sighed, and I was afraid that had said precisely the wrong thing.

When you turned your head to look at me your eyes were wet. "It still amazes me," you whispered into that cool morning stillness, "astounds me, that you could love me at all."

"I do, I do, I do," I said against your lips, where they met mine, wet and heavy with our combined morning breaths. "I love you like—I love you so—it's suffocating."

"When I die," you rolled that thought around your mind so often back then, do you still now?, "When I die, I want to have drowned in you." You turned away, looked at the ceiling again.

"When we die," I confessed, "and every moment of our long, prosperous lives flash before our elderly eyes, I hope they are full of moments like this one."

You growled and rolled over onto me, and I only realised that you had a cut on your hand when I got back to Gryffindor and saw that I had blood on my skin.

The air in the Shack this morning smelled like the air in the Shack that morning, and I didn't fit with the smell anymore, because you weren't there with me.

I felt a bit like an interloper in my own memory.

151.

You were out on the grounds again, love. I wish you wouldn't, sometimes. It makes all this so much more difficult. I am here to kill Peter, and then perhaps to die myself, or maybe to live, but right now I can only think as far as Peter.

Seeing you brings up memories and dreams in an awful kaleidoscope of affection in my head. You were so near I could have called to you, and I tried to remember the last time I spoke to you.

Middle of October, 1981, before I'd gone off to do something for the Order. And then there was that, and then there was Halloween, and then there was Azkaban, and now there you are.

What was it we last said to each other, Remus? You would have been yourself, and I a little distant, because this was back when I suspected you.

So you probably asked where I was going, and I imagine I lied and said Manchester, but it was actually Brighton, my love. Merlin, it's inconceivable that I need to make conjectures about the last time I spoke to you. I should have every bit of that conversation memorised, every inflection, every pause, every word.

I do know this: I loved you even though I thought you were passing information. I loved you because you were Remus, Moony, the man I fell in love with when we were thirteen and believed we couldn't, but still we  _did_. Because even though I knew that you may have been Voldemort's, you were also mine, and I had had you first, and I had had so much more than your loyalty.

If you were weak, I thought, if you believed the world hated you and so you hated it right back, hated it enough to go to Voldemort, then I would forgive and forgive you and forgive you, until I died. So, even though I cannot remember it exactly, I know that the last time I spoke to you was also the last time I kissed you, the last time I told you that I loved you.

Although you have certainly doubted me in the last twelve and a half years, perhaps even condemned me, perhaps wished the Dementor's Kiss for me, I hope that you always knew, that you still know, that I loved you, love you. Even though you believe me guilty, I hope you have never doubted that.

So please, Remus, please stay inside the castle.

152.

I have just escaped from you.

Or, I have escaped a dementor.

But I have also left you.

Tonight, it was like everything was right again, for an hour or so. You were there and you believed me. "Where is he, Sirius?" you said, as if you had known all along. You didn't, I know you thought that I was guilty, but now you have seen Peter and your life has been rewritten but still you are not repulsed by me, you are not repelled by me, you are you and you always love me. This is a thing I know.

And Harry—Remus, James would be unbearably proud of him. I know you know that. But I need to say it again: James would be insufferable with pride.

Tonight, we almost had everything, for the barest moments, and then the moon and you and Peter, the terrible coward, the bastard, the traitor. I hope I didn't hurt you when I got you off into the woods. What a horrific return to our teenage years, to me fighting you back and back. But I will not be there tomorrow to see the scratches and bruises I've left on your skin. All the times I've fought you as Padfoot, I've always seen you in the morning. I feel the loss of you acutely. Almost, Remus, we almost had a second shot at always.

If I see you again, I am going to sit you down and tell you three things: I will tell you that I love you. I will tell you that I'm sorry. And I will explain to you that even dead, even drowning, that as a manic and an animal and a criminal, as an innocent man and a teenager and a madman, that whatever I have been, I have loved you.


End file.
